Feb 4, 1999

Watcmen Have Maritimes In Their Radar
By Barry Walsh

The Tragically Hip have seen and conquered the Maritimes, and now their old pals and touring mates the Watchmen are aiming to do the same--only on a slightly smaller scale.
Bassist, former Newfoundlander and resident Webmaster Ken Tizzard calls from Toronto, just prior to embarking on the last Canadian club'n'college jaunt to promote the group's latest CD, "Silent Radar" (EMI). First stop: Big Buck's Mountain Lodge in Burlington. Hmm.
"I have no idea what it's like," Tizzard says of the curiously named venue. "Sounds interesting, though."
From there, the band makes its way east with a series of dates in the Maritimes (see bottom of story) and then ventures to various ports of call, including the other side of the world. "Silent Radar" is released in Australia on Mar.26, but the advance single has been generating quite a buzz down under.
"It's a great place, very similar to Canada," says Tizzard. "You get the feeling that, like Canada, it's an independent country that doesn't want to be a little America. And it's very friendly too--you don't feel threatened walking along the main streets at 2 am."
Australia is just one of the international markets starting to warm up to the Watchmen's dense yet immediate guitar rock, with others soon to follow as the albums slowly but surely become available. But Tizzard thinks some countries may take longer than others to get it. "Germany's really good for us--it's like the last remaining rock market in Europe," says the articulate bassist. "But England seems really pop-dominated at the moment. If Leonardo DiCaprio put out a record it'd be huge."
God forbid.
In any case, the Watchmen are certainly logging up the air miles and the Petropoints for this record. Released last spring and yielding several singles ("Stereo," "Any Day Now"), the record put the band back in the spotlight after a comparatively muted response to 1996's "Brand New Day." The band (singer Danny Greaves, guitarist Joey Serlin, drummer Sammy Kohn and Tizzard) has taken "Silent Radar" to as many audiences as possible, via last summer's Edgefest tour, a fall tour with Big Wreck and American shows with the Hip-- shows that turned Tizzard into a fan.
"I had only seen them in places like Maple Leaf Gardens before, and that's not really a place to fully appreciate a band. But playing with them in the States, in smaller venues, you can really see how they work and feed off each other," Tizzard says. "Plus you have these Canadians driving for 10 hours to see them in Cleveland, so it becomes a very special experience."
Tizzard says the band aims to provide their audience with very special experiences as well, through the shows and through their Web site (www.the-watchmen.com), which, under Tizzard's tutelage, the band updates and contributes to regularly, in unique ways. Click onto their site now, for instance, and you can read book reviews written by band members. Interesting--a band that assumes its audience can read. As facetious as that sounds, after cruising the 'net for a while, you start to think that artist Web sites are just blinking, winking press release bins--designed with little or no capability for artist/fan interaction or idea exchange.
"We wanted to take it a step beyond just information," Tizzard says of their site. "The idea is to give people an insight into our lives, and maybe to gain insight into theirs. We can play a show in Edmonton, come back to the hotel at 3am and get an e-mail from a fan who just saw the show. And then we can e-mail them later that morning and say 'thanks.' That's pretty cool."
While the band is interested in keeping the site fresh, they're probably more interested in keeping the sounds fresh, which is why they're incorporating new tools to record with, building on the sonic exploration in evidence on "Silent Radar."
"'Radar' is really a headphone record," Tizzard says, after a discussion on new sounds emanating form the electronica scene. "I think we may be rediscovering what we can do with guitars.It's too bad that I can walk into a store and see so many albums and say 'I know what this sounds like.'"
Tizzard says there's excitement in the Watchmen camp over demos done in August, where they brought in samplers and sequencers, to try to find some new sounds.
"Let me balance that by saying we're not wanting to turn into something else," he adds. "Danny's got a very unique voice, and there's Joey's guitar--both very distinctive Watchmen traits. So the music is definitely going to be ours.
"We're in exploration mode."